One good habit

It’s soapbox time.

These self help gurus are overwhelming. Suffocating daily routines, conflicting self help books, personality quizzes. You’re classed into phenotypes, archetypes, personality types. You’re like a cattle for them to manipulate. No wonder you walk away frustrated and worse off than you started.

I have a friend who wakes up extra early, takes a cognitive performance test to rate his mental state, fills out a sleep quality spreadsheet, journals, reads, goes to the gym, comes back to take an ice cold shower, makes the bed and blogs while commuting. It’s not self improvement, it’s exhausting! It’s manic.

Can you blame a sane person for snoozing when they see that as the alternative?

Over the last five years of self growth (self deception?) I’ve found a few things that work well in a swamp of crap.

Here’s the best of them: one habit. Before lifestyle design, before self improvement, there’s one good habut.

Simple.

Five years ago I was a chronic snoozer.

Four years ago my friends and I did a 30 day Challenge to see who could get in the best shape. Those 30 days turned into the first good habit in an extremely unhealthy lifestyle.

The next year I committed to making my bed every morning. Now I had fitness + bed making.

The following year I worked to build a meditation habit.

Last year it was stoicism.

This year it’s fixing my sleep.

Over a long enough period, you internalize the habit. It becomes part of who you are. Over a span of a few years, you’ve evolved from Charmander to Charizard, compounding one good habit on another. No overwhelm, just Pokémon supremacy.